Kosovo-North Macedonia Highway Opened With Fanfare

A 60-km highway connecting the Kosovo capital of Pristina to the border of North Macedonia was officially opened on Wednesday. "If yesterday we dreamed of a Kosovo like this, today it is a reality," President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo said at the ceremony held close to the border with North Macedonia.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj expressed admiration for the project and announced that work on another highway, connecting Prizren in southern Kosovo with Istog, will start soon.

"Twenty years ago this was a way of escaping the country, yet today we breathe freely," Haradinaj said.

Kosovo Assembly Speaker Kadri Veseli, North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, Assembly Speaker Talal Xhaferi, Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, US Ambassador Philip Kosnett, and Kosovo Infrastructure Minister Pal Lekaj were among the other top guests at the inauguration.

"Complex infrastructural projects provide opportunities to governments, companies and individual workers to develop their skills and planning management and construction. I am confident that, as Kosovo's ministry has learned from experience, they will continue to develop clear budgeting and payment plans, and identify ways to take full advantage of projects to further develop capacity and abilities," Kosnett said.

The highway, which Haradinaj has called one of the best infrastructural projects in the Balkans, has cost Kosovo a good deal.

However, a government meeting on Tuesday approved a decision to build two more access points on the highway, at Ferizaj/Urosevac and at Vitia/Vitina.

"The means will be provided by the Kosovo government and Ministry of Finance," the Minister of Infrastructure, Pal Leka, told the government meeting on Tuesday.

At a press conference...